The Kennedy Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee between the Libertarian National Committee and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s now-suspended presidential campaign, has disbursed approximately $2.5 million to its various partner organizations since its formation, according to recent quarterly filings with the Federal Election Commission.
The Kennedy Victory Fund filed its October quarterly report this past Tuesday, providing the first look at its fundraising and spending activities since its creation in July. The report covers financial activity through the end of September, showing that the Fund raised a total of $2,935,810.79 and disbursed $2,785,337.34. These disbursements included payments to partner organizations, consulting fees, and administrative costs.
Contribution rules outlined on the Fund’s website indicate that donations are distributed across partner organizations according to specific limitations. The first $6,600 from individual donors, or $10,000 from multicandidate committees, is allocated to Team Kennedy. The next $41,300 from individuals, or $15,000 from PACs, is allocated to the Libertarian National Committee. Any remaining funds are distributed to the remaining state parties and PACs involved in the joint fundraising agreement.
Including the Libertarian National Committee and Team Kennedy, twelve organizations comprised the Kennedy Victory Fund at the time of its filing. The largest recipient of funds was the Libertarian National Committee, which received $1,584,900 in seven separate disbursements. Team Kennedy received the next largest amount, totaling $271,900 spread across 13 payments.
Several state Libertarian Party affiliates and other political groups also received funds. Both the Libertarian Party of Colorado and the American Independent Party of California were allocated $116,850. The Libertarian Parties of Connecticut, Nebraska, and Hawaii, along with the Libertarian Party of Michigan Executive Committee, Inc., each received $77,800. Additionally, the Libertarian Party of Montana, the Free New Mexico Party, the Unified Libertarians of Massachusetts, and the Libertarian Mutual Aid PAC were each disbursed $46,700.
Notably absent from the list is the Libertarian Party of Georgia, which voted to join the Kennedy Victory Fund late last month. However, this absence is likely due to the timing of the quarterly filing. An amended Statement of Organization, submitted several days before the report, indicates that the Georgia affiliate has yet to finalize its partnership.
In addition to disbursing funds to its partner organizations, the Kennedy Victory Fund reported $130,817.22 in processing and consulting fees. The Fund also made a $25,000 donation to Rescue The West, Inc., a nonprofit organization seemingly associated with Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle, based on public records. Lastly, the report noted the return of $40,544.92 in donations, with the bulk sum of refunds issued on the day Kennedy formally suspended his presidential campaign.
Real football, or handegg?
Yes and no, respectively.
Some people who ‘left the party’ and in some cases are starting additional fraction of fraction 5th afterparties sure care a lot between different partyarch factions .. not me. Pox on the party and it’s factions even more so. And pox on the people front of bulldozer afterparties. Are you ready for some football?
I pay way more attention than I should to partyarch clowns as it is, but thankfully less than y’all. More than zero is entirely too much. Too much time and energy down that useless bottomless hole long long ago.
“So much for oft repeated claims by those from the out of power faction that they’re about to run out of money and bankrupt.”
They would be if it weren’t for Kennedy.
Based on the figures above, the LNC is receiving $1.6M (5.8 times as much as the Kennedy campaign), and the LP is receiving $2.2M (8.1 times as much as the Kennedy campaign). And that does not include the money not reported here, which Mr. Hagopian referred to.
Even if they are required to spend 90% of it to benefit Kennedy, that still leaves the LNC with $160k (9.3% of the total that benefits Kennedy in one way or another) and the LP as a whole with $220k (9.8%) to spend not to Kennedy’s benefit.
The LP in general and the LNC in particular really do desperately need that money in order to stay afloat following their sketchy nomination of the immensely unpopular Oliver-ter Maat ticket.
And Kennedy is pretty much just gifting it to them, because practically all of this money comes from donations to Kennedy. This fund exists solely because the maximum amount one can donate to independent candidates (Kennedy) is much lower than the amount one can donate to third parties (LP). Anyone who would want to donate to the LP, can do so without going through this fund; so all the money going into this fund, is only doing so thanks to Kennedy.
In effect, Kennedy is paying the LP an 809% processing fee to help him receive donations beyond the per donor maximum that he could otherwise receive, with the only possible condition being that they spend 90% of that processing fee to his benefit somehow. That is to say, at “worst” – for the LP – he is paying them a 728% processing fee to spend on him, plus another 81% processing fee to spend anyway they like. And if that somehow seems unreasonable to you, recall that the LP would never see even a penny of this money if it weren’t for Kennedy.
Yet Harlos and its henchmen are throwing tantrums, because they would much rather bankrupt the LP than get bailed out by Kennedy, since he is far less unlibertarian that they and their anti-libertarian ticket are.
Let’s wait and see what they do with that money first. My understanding, from reading other articles here and on third-party watch, is that they have to spend that money on the Kennedy campaign. That of course means the Trump campaign these days.
So if they spend the money on campaign activities, the net effect of the revenue is zero. The exception being if they figure out a way to finagle paying payroll with some if it by claiming that LP staff are doing functions for the Trump campaign.
But to be clear about one point, I do not consider myself part of any faction within the LP. I am not a member, do not attend their meetings, do not participate or even watch any of their social media, and I am unlikely to vote for their candidate in November. The only information I usually get about what they are doing is from reading it on two of my favorite websites.*
* no, IPR and 3PW are not the only websites I visit
@Unimportant
If you’ll recall, the “Libertarian National Committee would receive ten percent of the donations,” (click the user name link to that quote in the article about the agreement) so “the Libertarian National Committee… received $1,584,900 in seven separate disbursements,” which would only leave them with $158,490 after the Team Kennedy-directed spending.
In August 2024, the LNC ran a deficit, outside of Team Kennedy-directed expenses and joint fundraising committee revenue, of about $46,000, if analysis by others of their August financial reporting is accurate. They also ran a deficit of $17,606 for July, assuming that month’s report and analysis is accurate. So, the Kennedy money is keeping the party afloat through the election only 18 days away (and probably for a few suckers a couple of months more as they pay back favors and try to help the Kennedy campaign pay off debt), and the money has gone from a river to a trickle since Kennedy suspended his campaign to stump for Trump.
So, without September 2024’s financials, they’ve already dipped into this “windfall” by just over $63,500 for the quarter by overspending their contributions. Considering that only April had a net positive revenue to expense in 2024, it can be safely assumed that, outside of the Kennedy money, they’ll continue to run deficits for the last 4 months of the year. Will it be the ~$100k in the red to run through the rest of the third quarter’s Kennedy money? How much will October and November raise for a suspended campaign of which they get 10%?
Obviously, some financial shell games can be played for a while to keep the lights on, but I don’t expect that they can keep that up through the end of 2025 (a post-Presidential election year being the historically lowest fundraising year in a 4 year cycle), much less the next convention in Michigan. It doesn’t appear they’ve opened registration for that convention yet, but one might expect that the rule to prevent co-mingling of convention funds with operating funds might be suspended or ignored to allow “borrowing” from it to keep the lights on through to make it the next LNC’s problem to pay the hotel in Grand Rapids.
According to the JFA, 90% must be spent for the RFK Jr campaign. Therefore, is 90% of the $1,584,900 reserved for RFK’s use, or is it the available for LNC spending?
“So much for oft repeated claims by those from the out of power faction that they’re about to run out of money and bankrupt.”
Is that actually funds available to the LNC to use, or is that just the accounting of which org’s donation limits are used for the various donations? If it is the latter, then the Kennedy Victory Fund gets to determine how that money is spent.
If it is the former, it’s still a morally bankrupt move, as it shows us how much the LNC has sold itself out for.
So much for oft repeated claims by those from the out of power faction that they’re about to run out of money and bankrupt. I should have learned decades ago to stop taking claims from any partyarch factions against each other seriously. No points for me. At least I take them skeptically, so some partial points for me.
Do you have any juicy morsels on that front which you could afford to share with the class, Mr. Hagopian?
You should do an article on the multiple state parties who received large payouts who did not claim it on their FEC filings…
Also, which states sent their money directly to National and whether they had a secret agreement to do so…